Pardee RAND Graduate School
1/1/24
By the end of the quarter, you should be able to:
Lecture days:
Workshop days:
Robustness:
Will my research design provide a reliable answer?
Feasability:
Is my research question answerable given my constraints?
Relevancy:
Is this a meaningful question to ask and who is the audience?
Relevancy is particularly important for policy analysis!
Causal pathway diagrams allow us to visualize our theory and begin to develop a design plan.
Using our theory, we can try to determine an accurate data strategy (measurement) and an answer strategy (design) to test our research question.
Try working back from then end of the study (the estimate) to the necessary methods and data needed to obtain that result.
Flowcharts can be used to plan out analysis steps and also serve as a useful rhetorical tool.
Gantt charts provide an intuitive way to plan out timing.
Use a a budget estimator adapted to your schedule and products.
If you think about it, specificity is also an act of shrewdness. A survey of 40 years of literature is vulnerable to all kinds of objections
The subject of “Gealogy,” for instance, is much too broad a topic. “Vulcanology” as a branch of geology, is still too comprehensive. “Volcanoes in Mexico” might be developed into a good but superficial paper. However, a further limitation to “The History of Popocateptl” (which one of Cortéz’s conquistadores probably climbed in 1519 and which erupted violently as late as 1702) would make for a more valuable study. Another limited topic, spanning fewer years, would be “The Birth and Apparent Death of Paricutin”
Here, I would suggest the last topic, but only if the [PhD] candidate really says all there is to say about that damned volcano.
-Eco, 1977
Figuring out impactful research questions seems to be an art; here’s some starting points I’ve found useful:
Think critically about who will care about the results and how the results will be used:
Your results are only useful if they get to the right audience. Start thinking about how your results will be disseminated at the beginning of your project!
For class on Wednesday, please prepare the following:
Pardee RAND